


Not For Use

by solsticezero



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: writerinadrawer, WriterInADrawer 4.05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:18:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solsticezero/pseuds/solsticezero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story is part of a short-duration writing contest. Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed. If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Not For Use

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a short-duration writing contest. Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed. If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.

There was an old-fashioned rotary phone sitting on her desk, shining in the buzzy fluorescent lights. (Gwen hated those lights; every morning when she went to her office she swore to herself that the next time there was a lull in apocalypses, she would have them torn out and replaced with real lamps.) The file next to the phone was filled out in Lois's neat handwriting, and Gwen picked it up, absentmindedly shrugging out of her coat.

_"...by Torchwood field officers at approximately 4:28am GMT after a civilian distress call to local police. Civilian insisted that artefact was able to connect to past and future telephone lines with appropriate concentration. Tests pending."_

At the bottom was a personal note. _"Gwen-- I thought this would be best stored in your secure archives. We don't want the junior research staff causing another paradox, do we? --Lois"_

Gwen laid her coat across her desk and dropped into her chair. She set down the file to look at the phone.

Oh, Lois. Always so helpful.

She cradled the receiver against her ear and dialed, the whir of rotary numbers like the sound of riffled playing cards. At the first ring, her heart leapt into her mouth. It rang again. And again. Her hands were slick.

"Leave a message for Gwen and Rhys and we'll call you back!"  
"If we remember!"  
"Oi!"

The answerphone. She honestly couldn't believe that the time she concentrated on happened to be a time when no one was home.

Her mouth hung open on the words -- leave Cardiff, leave Wales altogether, don't chase a man in a big blue coat -- but she couldn't edge them out.

Her eyes had fallen on the battered framed photograph at the edge of her desk. Owen was laughing at something Tosh had said, looking up at her from the left side of the settee while she looked down at him from the arm, embarrassed but pleased. On the other side, Ianto was doing his best to ignore whatever Jack was saying, staring down at a PDA in his lap, but Gwen could just see the ghost of a smile there. Jack stood leaning against the wall, his mouth always open, forever laughing at himself.

Gwen sat in the middle of all of them, smiling up at Rhys behind the camera.

There was nothing for it. She let out a breath that buzzed in the old receiver.

"It's worth it," she said into the phone. "In the end. It's worth it."

She put the receiver back in its place.

She opened a drawer and fished through the layer of paperclips and old receipts before she found the stamped metal tag. _Not For Use._ She wound it through the dial wheel and clipped it closed.

Then she sat back, the photo in her hands, and waited for the sun to rise through the gaps of the window blinds. Just another day. Nothing changed.

Still worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a short-duration writing contest. Please do not comment on this story, positively or negatively, until this notice is removed. If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.


End file.
